Bombarded with opportunities

Bombarded with opportunities 

One of the most unexpected and wonderful and terrible things that happen in your 50's is that you get bombarded with opportunities. Really. Great. Opportunities. Not generic run of the mill stuff, but really great opportunities. The kind you could only dream about 20-30 years ago. Now they are here, knocking at your door. Almost begging you to take them and seize the day and change the world!

You had darn well better be unbelievably good at saying "no" otherwise you will destroy whatever synergy/excellence/effort/experience brought you to receive these opportunities in the first place. Do you have whiplash yet? Yes this is the stage of life where your best opportunities come, and where you say "no" more and better, and more frequently than ever before.

Pay attention here, you are probably looking at all of this wrong. Offered opportunities are NOT an invitation to change the world, they are instead mostly a social phenomenon designed to ride your coattails, mine your networks, and get something for nothing. For these reasons and many more, as I said you damn well better be unbelievably good at saying "no" to the vast majority of these really great opportunities. Offered opportunities ARE however an acknowledgment that you are at the peak of your career, that you are providing consistent value in your field, that you have something important to consider. 

So while being bombarded with opportunities is a standing ovation kind of experience, the wise will be super selective and say "no thank" you to the majority of them . . . so that you can keep producing the awesome stuff that got you to this point in the first place.

The central coast effect

The central coast effect

When I got into the car to drive to the airport it was 8 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so cold that the defroster button was frozen so tightly that I could not get it to work. The horn was frozen and it wouldn't work. Thank God the car actually started and got me to the airport so that I could go somewhere 50 degrees warmer!

Now three beautiful warm days later, I have to head back to the colder weather, but at least I got a great reprieve from the harsh winter weather. This is what I am mentally referring to as "the central coast effect" or another way to say it is change the story you are telling yourself or a third version could be, let's change this tune so that we can have a mental restart and do something beautiful.

We need these "mental weekend trips" away on a regular basis, so that we can see and experience all that is the now in vivid sharp accurate immediacy. We can be all present if we don't feel like we are stuck forever in a frozen wasteland. As Earl is fond of saying, "everyday is beautiful at my age" so too is the beauty of the central coast effect in mid-winter.